A sleeve of the kind to which the present invention refers has distal and proximal ends and a plurality of annular pressure cells extending parallel to the ends of the sleeve, with inflatable fluid bags disposed in the cells and connectable to an appropriate fluid line. Known sleeves are made in initially flat shape, being adapted to be wrapped around a human body or a limb thereof and fixed thereon. The sleeves are made of two sheets of flexible material such as nylon, that constitute inner and outer layers of the sleeve and have distal and proximal end edges and two lateral edges, and strips of flexible material that extend between the two side edges of the sheets, and are each sewn with its one side on one of the sheets and with its other side either on the other sheet or on an immediately adjacent neighboring strip, whereby the pocket-like cells are formed. The strips are sewn in such a manner that each cell formed thereby, except for the most distal cell, overlaps its immediately adjacent cell to make sure that, when adjacent fluid bags inserted into the cells are inflated, the pressure area defined thereby is continuous. The cells are open adjacent the side edges of the inner and outer sheets to facilitate insertion thereto and withdrawal therefrom of their corresponding inflatable fluid bags.
One example of a sleeve of the kind described above is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,200.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,556 discloses another kind of a compression sleeve in which, instead of cells with inflatable fluid bags, longitudinal inflatable pressure chambers are formed by means of connecting inner and outer sheets of the sleeve by a plurality of longitudinal and peripheral sealing lines. The inner and outer sheets in this case are made of fluid-impervious material. However, in this sleeve, immediately adjacent chambers do not overlap and, therefore, when inflated, present a pressure area which has discontinuities along the longitudinal sealing lines.